Today in "group meeting" we briefly discussed the reliability of self-reported demographic information. One researcher shared the surprising fact that in a study that used sibling pairs as the basis of analysis, the brothers reported having 5-10% few cousins than the sisters (on average). And i thought i was the only one who had a hard time remembering all of my relatives.
One of the things i like best about living in Ann Arbor so far is the public transportation. Luckily for me there is a bus stop right outside my apartment complex; and if i flash my UM ID to the bus driver, i ride for free. My school building is just a few stops away. My car's fuel tank still contains gas from Grand Rapids.
The only problem i have with the bus system is the lack of a good service map. The Ann Arbor Transit Authority has two types of route maps available on their site but each has a significant drawback. There is a route specific map [PDF] that gives the times that the bus is scheduled to arrive at selected stops on the route. The time table is accompanied by a stylized road map that shows some major locations along the route but doesn't show exactly where it runs though the city. Because it doesn't show any of the streets just off the route, its hard to figure out just how close to your destination it runs.
The second map is an overview of all of the routes. This map is hard to read because seven of the routes are the same color and they overlap at various places which makes it difficult to tell where exactly the bus runs. Additionally this map, like the other, doesn't indicate where all of the bus stops are. A few are listed but there's no way to tell if there is one closer to your destination. When i'm actually on the bus, i'd like to have a good idea of where i'll be getting off when i pull the cord. I wish there was a version of each route specific map that overlaid the route on a city map and listed every one of the stops.
The UM Parting and Transportation Services department does have a helpful website called Magic Bus that uses GPS devices to show exact locations of the currently running buses and overlays that information on a Google Map of the city. Plus they've flagged each of the stops along the route. Unfortunately this service is only available for a few of the routes that UM operates itself and not the AATA routes that i use. I really wish something like this existed for all busses in Ann Arbor.
I went to a lecture this week by Dr. Potash called "Searching High and Low for Bipolar Disorder Genes." It was especially interesting to me because my first project at U of M is a study attempting to identify genes for this disorder as well. He gave an overview of the work that has been done in the past as well as the work being attempted by his team and ours.
Human DNA is really just a long chain of molecules. Researchers hope to determine which molecules in which positions cause certain illnesses. The current study design of choice is called a genome-wide association study (GWA). This involves looking at just 1 million of the roughly 3 billion molecules at certain positions in the chain. Researchers only look at a subset of the positions because looking at the whole whole chain (a process called whole genome re-sequencing, or WGR) is prohibitively expensive right now. Nevertheless, even just those 1 million samples are enough to help narrow down potential problem zones.
The most interesting part for me is that while WGR currently costs around $10 million per person, Dr. Potash said that within the next 5-7 years that prices will come down to something closer to $1,000 per sample. This means that in the next few years that i will be working on my PhD, WGR will become a practical tool of study and our ability to detect problem DNA sequences will greatly increase. This really is an amazing time for medicine and a great time to be a biostatiscian.
I finally have my internet back up and running. I still have no idea of what the problem was but after three long calls to tech support and a week of downtime, i can finally surf the internet from home. Oh how i missed it. This will make life much easier in Ann Arbor. I can now use Google Maps to find the nearest pizza place.
Today i moved all of my possesions to Ann Arbor. Tomorrow i start work on my first offical research project as a member of the UM Genome Science Training Program. The move went well thanks to the help from my mother, sister Dawn and friend Katie. I haven't had my own internet connection for the past few days because they cut off my old service a bit earlier than i was expecting, and i don't get my new service until later this week. Currenty i'm at a coffee shop with free wi-fi trying to figure out which bus will get me to work tomorrow morning. I kept my old phone number if you need to get a hold of me.